I recently purchased Lawrence Wood’s book: “Your Caption Has Been Selected: more than anyone could possibly want to know about The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.” It arrived just days before Hurricane Lala reached Hawaii.
With no electricity, no Wi-Fi, and no cell phone reception, but in the safety of my dark house, I read Larry’s book…by flashlight. Well, most of it. The power came on and I finished it the next morning in the Humor Hammock—where I do most of my humor reading.
In the Humor Hammock reading Amy Kurzweil’s graphic memoir: “ARTIFICIAL - A LOVE STORY”.
Flashlight Cartoon
Coincidentally, the night I was reading “Your Caption Has Been Selected”, The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #1001 Finalists were announced (one advantage of living in Hawaii is because we’re six hours behind New York City EDT I don’t have to stay up late for the announcement.)
For TNYCCC contestants this is one of those agonizing two-week durations. There are forty-seven Contests a year. The delta between a fifty-two week year is because of these two-week Contests. These three Finalist contestants had an extra week of waiting before they find out who won.
Contest #1001 is a snail holding a flashlight and telling a scary story around a campfire, cartoon by Lynn Hsu.
The three Finalists are listed in their positions per the online website. (Inside joke: let’s not talk about how those positions are decided and the final outcome.)
Research and Reading
I’ve researched quite a bit about single-panel cartoons, in particular TNYCCC, bought numerous books about humor, and many graphic novels written by comic artists.
My journey into analyzing TNYCCC dataset started in 2023 and manifested into my WordsBelow website—which grew into a larger website: HumorOramaLOL. I find the analysis, munging, and wrangling of the datasets more enjoyable than caption writing.
However, it is a great joy to find out you have received the email containing the name of Larry’s book. A. Great. Joy.
Dwindling Opportunities
Sidebar: Unfortunately, single-panel cartoons and the artists that draw them have seen dwindling opportunities and fewer paid gigs. A.I. is fantastic for many reasons, but is also reducing opportunities for human-drawn single-panel cartoons. (I’m a computer scientist and see the value in A.I. tools—when done right. Not A.I. process slop. ref: “Linear Digressions” podcast, August 30, 2026 episode.)
I created PanelStripLOL out of my computer and data science background and a desire to encourage human comic artists to continue drawing single-panel cartoons.
I try to avoid tsundoku
My bookcase is filled with humor books, but I read Larry’s book before it got shelved.
Larry has the street cred to write a book about TNYCCC, even with such a title, given all the research available on TNYCCC. As Larry is the GOAT of the TNYCCC, indeed, his book is the GOAT book about TNYCCC.
Below is Larry’s Contest success shown on the HumorOramaLOL TNYCCC Leaderboard. You don’t have to scroll, he’s at the top.
The “1st & 2nd Score” is a HumorOramaLOL props to the contestants that not only have a Finalist Appearance, but after the voting is all done and calculated, their caption placed second or was the Winner. Winner gets three points, second place two.
Given the opaque nature of the Finalist caption selection process, some say the Contest really starts once Finalists have been chosen. But, given the great odds against making a Finalist Appearance, it’s an accomplishment in itself.
For perspective, the eight Contest wins in the chart, on the far right—that’s Larry; all alone. He has double the wins as the next nearest contestants. There are three contestants knotted in second place with four wins.
Larry not only writes funny captions, but his long form writing is just as funny. Having analyzed TNYCCC dataset minutiae—which I’ve turned into graphs & charts on HumorOramaLOL—I enjoyed reading his explanations and examples for successful caption writing.
His story telling of his and cartoonists’ experiences is very interesting. I appreciated his straight story telling and how he offers his opinions on captions. It’s refreshing to find opinions stated without hedging. Even with the ubiquitous umbrella statement of “humor is subjective” he explains how a caption works—or doesn’t.
Larry writes as he instructs us to do with captions; end on the joke. His Acknowledgements section at the end of the book genuinely thanks his supporters and his final sentence ends with humor.
It left me wanting more and I look forward to his book’s sequel.
And, I don’t think you have to be a cartoon caption contest analyzing nerd to appreciate the information. It was just fun to read the book.
While reading "Your Caption Has Been Selected" I found myself thinking: “Interesting, I want to remember this” or “that gives me an idea—I’m going to check the data.” Not wanting to mess up the book by highlighting entire pages (similar to my university books) I took to stickies.
There are so many interesting points in “Your Caption Has Been Selected.” I need to remember this, that, all of it.
Larry mentions Contest #742 and gives his caption an even-handed comparison against the competition. He comments how a caption should match the speaker’s expression. This is just one of his valuable tips for caption writing found in the book. Larry provides many tips, a list even, and provides examples of how to employ those tips.
His facial expressions tip has many contestants extensively pinching, shifting, re-centering, pinch a little more of the cartoon for a better view of facial expressions.
But, it can be maddening because just when you’ve got the zoom just right, you realize that cartoon facial expressions, as in real-life humans, are often ambiguous.
I remember Contest #742 well—it was my first ever entry. Indeed, I was a neophyte.
You can see a whole lot of data on the back of the Contestant Card. My numbers sure showed the hard, ugly truth.
That was the crowdsourced data. If only we also had the pie chart percentages Bob Mankoff provided for earlier Contests. He provided the vote percentages for first, second, and third place. See “The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Book: the winners, the losers, and everybody in between” with the foreword by Robert Mankoff.
Larry provides many useful footnotes for the interesting details and facts. He mentions articles, Bob Mankoff research papers, and podcasts too. I looked up several of Larry’s footnotes. One footnote led to a podcast with Emma Allen and the folks that did an alternative, NSFW caption contest website. I very much enjoyed listening to that podcast.
Sidebar: I go-off on a tangent about my first entry in this HumorOramaLOL Field Notes: “Search Captions Tool — now you can search punctuation.” This tool allows you to search Finalist captions and punctuation. Like how many captions use a bang. Larry discusses Exclamation marks should be used judiciously. As a neophyte captioner I didn’t know that.
Speaking of Bob
I highly recommend Bob’s book: “How About Never — Is Never Good For You? My life in cartoons.” It’s excellent.
And here are two books Bob recommended to me:
“The Humor of Humor” by Evan Esar and “Viva la Repartee: clever comebacks & witty retorts from history’s great wits & wordsmiths.”
For me, a Bob humor book recommendation equals book bought. And, I ditto Bob’s recommendations.
Larry writes of Bob often and includes Bob’s thoughts and insight. Valuable nuggets. Bob created TNYCCC which has turned into a weekly obsession for thousands of contestants and also wrote the Foreword in Larry’s book.
Every month Bob, who is president of CartoonStock, runs a CartoonStock caption contest. They post a video of the completely transparent judging process. You get to watch Bob, Larry, and a professional judging panel discuss the contest captions.
If you are a Finalist in TNYCCC, you get your name in the magazine. Win and you get in twice.
If you’re a CartoonStock contest winner or one of the five runners-up, you’re immortalized in a YouTube video. Also, CartoonStock rewards the winner and runners-up with some generous, cold, hard cash…via PayPal.
Enter CartoonStock Caption Contest
Click the image to view the YouTube CartoonStock Caption Contest #201 (This is my fav CartoonStock episode, other than contest #196, of course!)
Footnote
As I mentioned before, Larry provides footnotes referencing a plethora of information.
The notes are conveniently organized by book section and aren’t just references (You’ll want to read the references, too.) They include additional interesting details, even more cartoons and captions, and a couple of funny stories too! (Introduction #19: I laughed heartily!)
“Your Caption Has Been Selected” is a great book; informational and humorous. I enjoyed LOL.
Postscript
9/2/26: Hawaii is having an unusually active hurricane season. We’re hoping everyone stays safe.
